Keep us in the fellowship of your love, O God. Amen.
What’s the last dream you remember having? We had a wedding at St. Luke’s yesterday and I had a dream that I walked into the church and found that the floral decorations had essentially turned the church greenhouse – there were trees and shrubs everywhere. I couldn’t even see the altar. Among those who study dreams, the wisdom is that only the dreamer can interpret their own dream, so don’t try to psychoanalyze mine. For most of human history though, dreams have been known as a way to receive messages from God, so we would do well to pay attention to our dreams.
In
the field of studying sleep and dreams, there is no consensus on what exactly dreaming
is all about. Some say that our dreams have to do with memory consolidation and
formation, others say that it is our brain processing our thoughts and
interactions without the restrictions and filters that our conscious mind puts
on it, and some say that dreams are the way our brains clear up the clutter of
our minds. One thing that we do know is that, unless we’ve experienced some
sort of traumatic brain injury, we have 3-6 dreams each night with each one
lasting 5-20 minutes. The estimate is that we only remember about 5% of our
dreams once we are awake. And when it comes to the question of what our dreams
mean, most experts say that there is no way to know for sure and that our
dreams do not have set interpretations.
That
question of “But what does it mean?” is the same question that the faithful
were asking on the day of Pentecost. Faithful Jews from the region gathered, as
they did every year, for the feast of Shavuot. It is one of the pilgrimage festivals
in Judaism, meaning that people went up to Jerusalem to mark this holy day. The
feast was both a thanksgiving for the wheat harvest and a commemoration of Moses
receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Shavuot, especially in Greek-speaking
regions, went by the name “Pentecost” because Shavuot falls fifty days after Passover,
and “Pentecost” means “fifty.” This explains why there were “Jews from every
nation under heaven” gathered together.
What
happened was a dreamlike experience – the Holy Spirit came upon them all as
tongues of fire and they were able to speak in foreign languages so that all of
those gathered there were able to understand what was being said. Luke records
that even the Medes and Elamites heard their language spoken – those are groups
that had been defeated and had been extinct for centuries. It would be like me
telling you that I had coffee with a literal Neanderthal this week. And so just
as we might ask when we wake up from a dream, they asked “What does this mean?”
What
Pentecost means, beloved, is that God is up to something. Peter immediately recognizes
this and begins to testify by quoting from the Old Testament prophet Joel, “In
the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all
flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men
shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves,
both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” For Peter, it was
clear, what this means is that the Spirit has been gifted to us. And I wonder,
what dreams you have been given to dream?
God
has often used dreams to open our imaginations, to awaken us to new
possibilities, and to stir us up with awe and wonder. Just ask Jacob, Joseph,
Ezekiel, Daniel, or Mary and they’ll tell you that God changed their life in a
dream. Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero are some modern holy
dreamers. It is as Eleanor Roosevelt put it, “The future belongs to those who believe
in the beauty of their dreams.” Indeed, we are only here today because our
ancestors in faith dreamed dreams and then lived those dreams.
Dreams
are holy disruptions that help us to see things from a different and sacred perspective.
Just like the dreams that we have at night, sometimes the dreams that God gives
us don’t seem to be based in reality. And that’s exactly the point, God is
trying to show us something more glorious than we can currently imagine. Never
dismiss a dream as only a dream, for a dream is quite often a message from God.
In
Acts, and the quote from Joel, we see that the Spirit’s power to give dreams is
radically egalitarian – it falls on people of all sorts of peoples, both young
and old, men and women, high status and low status. This is a message of grace –
whoever you are, regardless of your mistakes, no matter how you do on tests,
how many friends you have, what names people call you, what kind of car you
drive, or how good you are at sports, the Holy Spirit is given to you so that
you, too, can dream dreams.
As
far as what the dreams will be like – Archbishop Desmond Tutu once wrote, “God’s
dream is a world whose ugliness, squalor, and poverty, its war and hostility,
its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed
into their glorious counterparts, where there will be more laughter, joy, and
peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and
sharing.” God’s dream is a part of what our Pentecost icon is pointing towards.
It is a prayer and vision for the dream of beloved community becoming a reality
in our midst. Aristotle said that “Hope is a waking dream,” and having that
vision always with us gives us a dream to pursue instead of the nightmares of
division and selfishness given to us by our politics and society.
On
Youth Sunday, we celebrate that the dream of God is continuing to stir in a new
generation. Our young people dream of a world free of the problems of division,
environmental abuse, and consumerism that older generations have given to them.
The poet Langston Hughes wrote, “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams dies, life
is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” Speaking to our younger members – sometimes
we adults forget how to dream. We get too busy with things like mortgages, investments,
and board meetings. We sometimes get stuck in our ways of thinking. We get too
distracted from our dreams. So we need you to remind us how to dream. We need
you to tell us about your dreams because your dreams are God’s dreams.
It’s been said that “Great
minds discuss dreams. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
And if you hang out enough adults long enough, you’ll realize that adults talk
a lot about people and events, but not enough about dreams. I know that you all
have great dreams for us to dream together about.
I also want to share with
you all a dream that coming into focus – and that is for St. Luke’s to be engaged
in mutual relationships in mission. For a long time, the St. Luke’s Foundation
operated by giving out grants after reviewing applications. Nothing wrong with
that – that is what we felt the Spirit calling us to do at that time. But we
dreamed a dream: a dream of not just check-writing, but relationships; a dream
of not the rich giving to the needy, but a dream of mutual growth, investment,
and companionship.
After much prayer and waiting
for the Spirit to bring such a partnership into being, I am excited to share
with you that we are entering into a companion relationship with the Bishop
James Hannington Memorial Cathedral in the Diocese of Mumias, Kenya. We are
still in the very early stages of this relationship and we have committed to
begin praying for another on Sundays. We pray for them and that our relationship
grows into a dream realized.
Just as is true for the dreams we have at night, holy dreaming means we need to rest and be quiet. And when we slow down, we’ll notice generosity in place of selfishness, forgiveness in place of resentment, hope instead of fear, collaboration instead of hostility, love in place of apathy, and life even in places of death. And we might ask, “What does this mean?” Well, Pentecost tells us what this means – the Spirit is giving us dreams to dream.
